


Taste

by zade



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also fluff, Beverly is Will's bro, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Dissociation, Gen, Hallucinations, M/M, Second Person, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Will is not okay, can't forget the cannibalism, graphic sex without explicit consent, possibly hallucination sex, possibly violent sex, spoilers for the end of season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 05:37:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You lie awake in bed that night, unshackled but trapped, and you think about all the meals that Hannibal ever fed you, and you, licking the plate and begging for more like the dog that he made you.  You realize with a start you are hungry, your stomach gurgling with emptiness and bile.  It’s not really a decision.  You bite down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taste

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful Andy for the beta! Couldn't do it without you bb.
> 
> General warnings for: cannibalism, mental illness in the form of hallucinations, disassociation, losing time, self-harm/mutilation, violent sex (?) without explicit consent, blood, fairly graphic imagery. Also there's fluff.

You wake up in a cold sweat, body dripping with it, head pounding thud thud thud like a kickdrum to the back of your skull. You lie still for a moment, listen to yourself breathing harsh breaths and your chest aches with each inhalation. Maybe you broke a rib. You reach up to mop the sweat from your face and you notice that your hands are covered in dirt and blue paint. What had you been doing last night? Downstairs, your newest arrival, a border collie, howls and scratches at the floor. You breathe deeply, letting the air fill the corners of your lungs. It still aches. You turn to the clock.

“It is 5:42 am. I am in Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is Will Graham.”

You roll out of bed, and your legs, cramping and exhausted, almost can’t hold your weight. You catch yourself on the dresser, wait for the cramping in your calves to subside. You head to the bathroom, brush your teeth, spit, get into the shower. You are not a morning person, and it takes you a while to wake up. You scrub at the dirt and paint but the vestiges remain under your nails and in your pores. When you get out of the shower, you have forgotten whether or not you brushed your teeth, so you brush them again, and realize when you spit that there is already toothpaste in the sink.

You pull on pants. Pull a t-shirt over your head. It makes your ribs pulse angrily within your chest and you can barely bring yourself to put on a button down. You do it anyway.

You don’t remember going to bed last night, and in the kitchen is a half empty bag of fried chicken that you don’t remember eating. You have lost time. Again. You figure you should call Hannibal, or Alana. 

You call Beverly.

She arrives at 6:40 am (and you are in still in Wolf Trap, Virginia, and your name is Will Graham). She is smiling, wearing flannel pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt with a heavy sweatshirt on top. It takes you a minute to realize it’s your sweatshirt. 

“I brought the usual,” she says, and holds up a grocery bag.

You didn’t think you called her enough for there to be a usual. 

Beverly sets up in your kitchen like she’s at home, pulling bowls from shelves and a whisk from somewhere. You didn’t even realize you owned a whisk. She makes pancakes, real ones that don’t come from a mix, pulling flour and eggs and milk out of the grocery bag. She soaks the pancakes in syrup, honest-to-fucking-god came from a tree maple syrup, and hands you the plate. 

She makes hot chocolate on the stove, melting chocolate into it and spiking it with rum. It’s not quite Hannibal Lector level of food, but it’s comfort food, and it’s sweet and rich and she feeds you, and savors her hot chocolate and waits for you to be ready to talk.

You both settle in on the floor by the couch, and the dogs gather around you. You want to make a joke about family meetings but you can’t because you are terrified that last night you killed someone or hurt someone or got married and you may never know about it.

“I lost time again.”

“Okay,” she says, and pets Anna, the yorkie, when she saunters up to where you are seated. Beverly has a way of speaking slowly, almost guarded, but giving you the benefit of the doubt. 

You tell her what you did last night—you read a book about vampires that Abigail recommended to you and had been beyond disappointed; you went to the hardware store; you fed the dogs; you woke up this morning covered in sweat and dirt and paint.

“Any blood?” she asks, smiling slyly at you.

She is the kind of woman you wish you could be attracted to if you were the kind of guy who was attracted to women. As it is, you are the kind of guy who is attracted to men like Hannibal Lector, men who tuck themselves into perfectly tailored suits with perfectly knotted ties and color-coordinated socks; men who have professions and hobbies and excel at everything; men who are so put together they might as well be an advertisement for glue; men who see you falling apart and don’t think any less of you for it. 

Sometimes you see Hannibal’s five o’clock shadow at four in the morning and you want to lick it. You wonder how much rum Beverly put in your hot chocolate. 

“No,” you tell her honestly. “No blood.” The taste of chocolate and burn of rum on your tongue is the feeling of home and stability.

“Then I don’t think you killed anyone. Though with a face like that,” she says, and she is laughing, “I would worry about having gotten hitched last night.”

You toss a throw pillow at her face and she bats it away, shaking with laughter in her oversized pajamas.

You start laughing, too. You glance at the clock. 

It is 7:37 am; you are in Wolf Trap, Virginia; your name is Will Graham; you have just remembered how to breathe.

\--

Hannibal’s hands are like knives, and even the gentle pressure of his fingertips on your chest makes you keen and quake. His kisses are harsh, hard, full of sharp edged teeth and firm, unyielding lips. You lean into them, into him, let his fingertips pierce the flesh of your thighs as you balance on his knees.

He presses into you with those blades of fingers, dry, and harsh, holding you down with the other hand, parting your lips and you suck on his fingers like a communion wafer. His fingers taste like blood and it makes you groan, rutting hard against his fingers and thin air. Behind him looms the stag, cradling a body in its antlers. Your vision is awash with blood. You groan harder.

He is wet when he begins to fuck you, but you don’t remember seeing lube or feeling it. His razor hands grip your shoulders, press you down onto him. His eyes burn into you and you close yours, unable to maintain contact. The girl impaled on the antlers begins to writhe, her death cry ringing in your ears, Hannibal’s hard lips bruising your neck with their pressure. You ache, a screaming ache in your hips and cock. She screams and screams and the stag steps closer Hannibal slits your throat with his hand his blood is on your tongue your body alight with flame and his fingers cold as ice grace your flesh and you are coming in waves of jittering ecstasy.

When you open your eyes you are alone in your room. There is a bruise on your neck and your hips are sore. There is no stag, no body, no Hannibal. Your body thrums as you come down from your high, and even though he is miles away you are still strung up between his sharp fingers and eyes.

\--

It is morning. You are in Baltimore, Maryland. Your name is Will Graham.

You’ve known he’s the killer for quite some time when they figure it out. Jack Crawford comes to visit you, peers at you through the bars like you are an animal at the zoo. A mongoose you think, and laugh and laugh as he stares at you blankly. You think at one time you could have called him a friend. You’ve had no one but yourself and your doctors and Alana to talk to in weeks. You can’t quite remember why you ever thought him worth the effort.

“We’ve found the Chesapeake Ripper,” he says, like it’s an apology. 

You laugh. Once you’ve started you can’t stop, like the tide has been unleashed, and you are laughing and laughing until you are sobbing, curled in on yourself, face red with tears. “He got away, didn’t he? You let him get away.”

Jack Crawford doesn’t say anything.

“You’re a cannibal. You realize that right? You’re a cannibal. I’m a cannibal. Alana—is definitely a cannibal.” You sneer at him through the glass. You feel like a crazy person, exhilarated and vindicated and trapped behind a row of steel bars. “And I didn’t kill those people.”

“Abigail Hobbs.”

“I didn’t,” you swear, and you shake your head vehemently. You didn’t. You didn’t. It was him, always him, twisting, marking, making, molding.

“The evidence—”

“Fuck the evidence!” You collapse on the floor, all of that energy gone. You’re responding well to treatment. You are healing. It all makes you so exhausted. “Go away,” you tell Jack Crawford and rub at your eyes until they’re tearing up from that instead of the hurt in your chest that throbs like broken bones when you think of him.

It is evening. You are still in fucking Baltimore, Maryland and will probably never leave. You are still (unfortunately and forever) Will Graham.

You lie awake in bed that night, unshackled but trapped, and you think about all the meals that Hannibal ever fed you, and you, licking the plate and begging for more like the dog that he made you. You realize with a start you are hungry, your stomach gurgling with emptiness and bile. It’s not really a decision. You bite down.

They call Alana in the next morning. They tell her you are self-harming.

You laugh when you hear that, hysteric, quaking with the humor of it all. You know self-harm. You lived your whole life with an empathy disorder, and you’ve stepped into minds that were too hard to shake off. When you cut up and down your thighs in high school—that was self-harm. When Beverly caught you on your seventh shot of vodka using whiskey as a chaser because you wanted your blackouts to be in your own damn hand—-that was self-harm. When you tiptoed off at Hannibal’s and used his black silk napkin to get yourself off while you pretending for five glorious minutes that he could love you—that was self-harm. 

This? This is about the taste. You couldn’t help it. You were hungry. You are sure you will recognize the taste. You started at the elbow, tearing hunks of flesh and muscle off your white white bones and licking up the blood until your whole forearm is a bloody mess and that is how they find you. It tastes like Hannibal’s design and that, and not the iron tang on your tongue, makes you want to vomit up your own raw flesh.

Alana calls it self-mutilation.

They bind your arm in clean white gauze, stich you up, fix you. She sits outside your cell and stares at you and waits for you to talk.

“I was hungry.”

She shudders.

“How did we not know?” You ask her after a minute when it seems clear she won’t answer. “I’ve eaten chicken before, and veal, and pork, and lamb, and I’ve had deer and fish and fucking buffalo and I never noticed the difference. I still can’t taste the difference. How can one species be masked so easily as so many others?”

“Will, what are you saying? That we should have known? That we should have suspected that Hannibal could have--”

“Don’t.” You squeeze the bandage on your arm until it hurts, until the physical pain is masking the pain of hearing his name and picturing his face. “Don’t say his name around me ever again.”

Alana leaves.

You are by yourself with the throbbing of your arm and on your tongue. You look down at the appendage. There is nothing appetizing about it. Hannibal might have found it appetizing. You imagine if he had had the chance to kill you, he would have eaten your heart. 

It is night time. You are in Baltimore, Maryland. Your name is Will Graham.

You think maybe he already did.


End file.
